Value Proposition
· Implementation only requires simple modification of current capture beads.
· Allows for targeting of custom sequences of interest that may be cell-type specific or expressed at low levels.
· Targets RNA molecules without polyA tails.
· Inexpensive modification to existing commercial methods.
Technology Description
Researchers at Johns Hopkins have developed a method to target custom nucleotide sequences for bead-based single cell sequencing. This method modifies the capture sequences on current beads to incorporate custom sequences that can target cell-type specific or low-yield sequences, as well as sequences without a polyA tail, such as rRNA and tRNA.
Unmet Need
Bead-based single-cell sequencing uses targeting sequences to capture mRNA molecules with individual molecular identifiers for each sequence. While these methods capture a large portion of RNA in each cell, they randomly collect each sequence based on binding of the 3’ polyA tail on each strand of mRNA. Thus, low yield sequences and sequences without polyA tails fail to be adequately captured for sequencing. Therefore, there is a strong need for a method to capture custom sequences for single cell sequencing that does not alter the subsequent sequencing workflow.
Stage of Development
· Method development is complete and proof-of-concept studies are ongoing.
Data Availability
Data available upon request.
